King Peanut Butter Banana Bread

It is definitely fall now – and I’ve had the flu to prove it. We’ve been dealing with plague here at Casa la Del – which is why I haven’t posted since last week. (sorry!) Shortly after Miss Thing had her event on Sunday, she came down with a cold. Of course, she recovered in about a day and a half. However, they must have rallied their forces and brought in reinforcements because when the little germy buggers got to me, I was down for the count. I’m now in day six of my recovery, and am still not a happy camper. This is one very un-nice flu. Fortunately, Mr. Man seems, (so far atleast) to be fighting it off – which given everything he’s been juggling at work lately is what we like to call A. Very. Good. Thing.

As if having the flu wasn’t bad enough this week though, it seems like I must have really done it to someone’s cornflakes, because I’ve had just one of those weeks where nothing seems to go right. On Thursday, the day before my dentist appointment that I’ve been trying to do for three months, (it’s a long story), I get a call from the dentist office saying that there’d been a mistake and that they no longer accept my insurance and that I’d need to find another provider. Who I’ll probably also have to wait another month to see. And spend another day or two trying to find out of the pages and pages of dentist listings from my insurer – most of whom SUCK. Needless to say I was… uhm… angry. And I was so sick I had to skip the Full Moon this month with my sisters. That was very disappointing. And Miss Thing has been … uh… rhymes with Witchy… I mean uh, Grumpy! She’s been very uhm… grumpy this week. Oh – and my Facebook account has been locked since Saturday Night. I’ve been getting a ‘site maintenance’ error… From what I hear they’re having Database issues and I’m one of the “lucky” account holders affected. So yeah. Bad Week.

At any rate – having several days of lying around in misery in bed meant that I didn’t get to use up these bananas (or much of anything else, really) that I received in my most recent FFTY box as I’d intended. I had lofty plans of pie or other some such thing, which naturally didn’t happen, so when I finally was feeling atleast marginally human I found myself looking at four smallish bananas that had definitely seen better days… or, in other words, that were absolutely perfect for banana bread.

But not just any banana bread – no, not this time. You see – ever since I visited Boston, and tried the King Pancakes at The Friendly Toast, I’ve been dreaming of Peanut butter, chocolate and Bananas. I rarely get bananas in my box, so I’ve been biding my time – waiting. I knew that if I was patient, sooner or later – the bananas would come, and I would get my chance to explore that heavenly flavor combination again. And boy, is it heavenly. I found a recipe for Peanut Butter Banana Bread on this site, which I used as a starting off point – but naturally I had to make some modifications. Minor things – but they really elevate this bread from yum to sublime.

Fair warning – this is definitely a dessert banana bread. It’s rich, dense and sweet. Mr. Man of course, didn’t care for the chocolate, saying that he felt that it drowned out the Peanut Butter Flavor, but Miss Thing and I both thought the chocolate was the feature that really elevated it to something special. Next time though, I think I would recommend dividing this in to two smaller loaf pans. I used a 9″ loaf pan, and it really was too much batter for the pan. The edges that kind of ‘muffined’ over the sides ended up quite a bit overdone before the center was. Other than that small flaw though, this is probably my new favorite banana bread.The only thing I have to say besides that is… Thank you, Thank you very much.

In a small bowl, prepare streusel topping. Mix together the 2 tbs of chopped Pecans, the 2 tbs of Chopped Chocolate, 2 tbs of Softened Butter, the 2 tbs brown sugar, the 5 tbs of Flour and a pinch of kosher salt until combined in to soft crumbles. Set aside.

In another bowl, stir together the remaining flour with the baking soda and kosher salt. Set aside.

In (yet) another bowl, stir together the yogurt and mashed bananas. Set aside.

Cream together the remaining sugar with the remaining butter until fluffy.

Add the peanut butter and beat until combined.

Scrape sides of bowl, and add eggs one at a time until combined.

Mix in the Yogurt Banana mixture, scraping sides again as neccessary.

Add the flour, a little at a time until just combined (do not overmix)

Stir in the remaining chocolate and pecans

Spread batter in to the prepared loaf pan

Top with reserved streusel mixture

Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until knife inserted in center of loaf comes out clean

Cool in pan for 15 minutes, then remove loaf from pan and transfer to wire rack

Cool completely before serving

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5 Responses to “King Peanut Butter Banana Bread”

Can’t wait to try this! Just to make a bit healthier, I’m going to
substitute walnut butter instead of peanut butter, and use
King Arthur White whole wheat flour instead of white. I’ll also use
Stevia (NuNaturals MoreFiber) as a sugar alternative.

[...] still didn’t have a dentist after all the aggravation from the beginning of the month. (See here). Given that I was in serious pain, I decided to compromise on my dentist criteria and settle for [...]